| National Parks Thailand
How to do a jungle safari in Khao Yai National Park
“Are all those ticks too, perhaps?” Our guide Tata followed my finger pointing at the bottom half my black pants, which had the tiniest of brown dots on it – and a lot of them! “Yes, those are ticks. You stepped into a nest. WAIT I’M GOING TO SET YOU ON FIRE!”
Fortunately both my pants and myself survived that exercise. But it goes to show that some of the best photographs we took on our trips – like the one of the white gibbon above – have not come easy or without potential risk. But in the end, we wouldn’t want it any other way, and we were absolutely marvelled at experiencing the beauty of Khao Yai National Park.
In this blog, we will tell you more about our experience in this park, including tips and tricks for booking a good tour and accommodation.
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About the park
Khao Yai national park is the oldest and most visited national park in Thailand. It is the Thai people’s own favourite national park. Especially popular with the locals from Bangkok and surrounding areas, who visit the park during the weekends. And for good reason!
Khao Yai is about a three hour drive from the capital (to the East) and has over 2,000 square km of pristine nature, including wildlife like hornbills, apes, monkeys, deer, squirrels, snakes and elephants, and famous waterfalls and hiking trails.
It is the best national park for those who want to encounter wildlife, and off course we were some of those people.
In truth you do not need “to risk it for the biscuit” as we always say, and go deeply into the jungle to see the animals. After the tick-incident described above, we encountered another group of gibbons the next day that were perfectly visible from the safe comforts of our 4×4.
The same also applied to the other animals we’ve met along the way, which unfortunately didn’t include elephants. They are also inhabitants of the park, but the chance to see them in Khao Yai isn’t as great as seeing them in Kui Buri National Park.
But during our three-day tour through Khao Yai we did see: millions of bats flying from a cave during sunset, the aforementioned gibbons, monkeys, a rare owl, various squirrels, a kingfisher, water monitors, turtles, two types of hornbills, deer, porcupines, a jackal and a scorpion. Not a bad result.
How to visit Khao Yai National Park
There are different ways to travel to Khao Yai. As said, the park is only a three hour drive from Bangkok. A distance that can be covered by bus (stop at the nearby village of Pak Chong, see this link for offers) as well as by car. We ourselves arrived in Khao Yai by private taxi that was arranged by TonTan Travels, the touring company we visited the park with.
Do make sure you visit the bathroom before the drive! Most of it is on a toll road and there’s no lavatory for miles. Fortunately, after showing our non-English speaking driver an image of a toilet, he did make a valiant effort to find one asap, and all was well in the end.
Where to stay in Khao Yai?
Around the national park, most activity takes place in the nearby village of Pak Chong, where most of the accommodations can also be found. It is definitely best to avoid the weekends, because a lot of people from Bangkok will visit and both the park and the hotels in the area can get crowded.
We were there for three days, from Thursday until Sunday and we experienced that Saturday was indeed a lot more crowded than the previous days. Also all the good hotels were fully booked a couple of months before – so make sure you plan your trip well ahead.
We weren’t impressed with our hotel here (which fortunately was the only accommodation-flop on our entire Thailand trip), but it was impossible for me to book anywhere else.
There were a few places we would’ve liked to stay at, on the basis of their reviews, but these were all fully booked. We do suggest checking these: Lala Mukha Tented Resort Khao Yai, Thames Valley Khao Yai Hotel, Kirimaya Golf Resort & Spa. Perhaps you are more fortunate than us.
How to do a jungle safari in Khao Yai National Park?
There are various ways to visit the park. You can self-drive. But you can also go with a professional tour guide. We did this with TonTan Travels and we can definitely recommend this agency. It was created by fellow photographers with a fondness for nature.
The tour we did was 2,5 days, and started in the late afternoon, with an exploration of the area around the national park. This is when, around sunset we watched millions of bats fly out of a cave, followed by a group of birds of prey looking for an easy meal. An overwhelming experience! The sound of the bats was very special. It creates a sort of localised wind.
Unfortunately, at the time of year that we were in Khao Yai (in December), the bats fly quite close to the cave and not over the wide-ranging field towards the sunset. If you want to see that scene, it’s better to visit Khao Yai in the summer months.
The next two days, we visited the park with Tata – our excellent guide, who spoke English very well and was the best wildlife spotter ever (and also a good tick-burner, and an extraordinary bird-imitator – a man of many talents). Tata shared with us a passion for nature and the animals, combined with a passion for photography, so we couldn’t be happier.
In addition to seeing all the animals named earlier, we also visited two pristine waterfalls, one of which (the Heo Suwat) is famous from the movie The Beach, the other (Haew Narok Waterfall) is less famous internationally, but more impressive in our perspective.
It is a bit of a hike from and back to the carpark, but the roads are really well maintained and you’ll be rewarded with beautiful nature and a grand view of the first plateau of the 150 meter waterfall.
Night safari Khao Yai National Park
At dusk on our first full day of the tour we also did a night safari through the park. We moved to another 4×4 with a really big light on it, which an additional guide shone around to see if there were any glistening eyes in the bushes or crossing the road. For us, these came in the form of many deer, but also porcupines and a jackal, which are all nocturnal animals.
Please note that the night safari starts as soon as the sun has gone down and lasts about one and a half hours, so you are not really on the road at night, but more in the evening. This activity is also very popular with the locals, which is something to take into account due to the possibility of crowds.
All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Khao Yai, which was largely due to the great tour, which also provided us with excellent and varied food along the way. In our view, a jungle tour in Khao Yai is a highly recommended activity when travelling through Thailand.
Find your own tour to Khao Yai National Park
The tour we did in Khao Yai has been linked in the description earlier, but can also be found here.
Other tours to Khao Yai National Park, including day trips from Bangkok, can be found on Viator (here) and on Get Your Guide (here and also linked below). Both are trusted companies we use to book our tours and that we’ve had great experiences with.
Of course, it is also possible to check for tours (and hotels) on TripAdvisor here.
Hi, we are Samira & Maurits, a travel-hungry couple with a passion for photography.
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